| .pavu.com on 5 Mar 2001 18:13:10 -0000 |
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| [Nettime-bold] [Fwd: Informative arts ? An interview of Clement Thomas of pavu.com] |
Informative arts ? A plining world. An interview
of Clement Thomas by Alban Saporos.
Alban Saporos : Clément Thomas, you are an artist
and you're pavu.com's Officer Général*. Isn't this
a turnchair ?
Clément Thomas : For who's heard this before,
musical chairs are never enough.
A_S : Your "ctgr theory" focuses on your
conception of the Network as "the realized worlds"
and you put forward the word of "informative
arts".
Yet within pavu.com, you deny making art. Can you
explain this contextual deviance ? To paraphrase
Marcel Duchamp, do netsters "make" pavu.com or is
it the contrary ?
C_T : Pavu.com does not postulate art as an action
basis. I'd say we work in a field where art is a
default value just because what we do doesn't fit
in any other field (in short, we don't produce
screws or batons...not yet though).
Theories are wits that have their own working
spheres with flavours such as fluctuations and
inflammations: raw informative material for good
upgrades.
A_S : I notice with pleasure you share the concept
of disposable theories but my question rather
focused on what the Internet brings that makes it
so different and so specific?
C_T : I favour theories' natural wearing. The
energy release resulting from theories' banging
justifies alone that people continue theorizing.
As to what the Internet brings, i'll answer the
Internet brings the Internet: all the attitudes
that come along with the Network, the tools
to make the whole thing work and one extra :
informative raw matter in astromic quantity.
Just as Aladdin's sunlamp, you only need to know
where to scrub to extract the marrow. The after
contemporary plines the next route on the
Internet.
A_S : Marshall MacLuhan once promulgated a famous
law according to which "the medium is the
message". Do you believe it now has to be
abrogated ?
In concrete terms, can we take for granted the
merging of a medium with its revelation - and vice
versa - as a statue with the marble it's carved
from ? How do you deal with this substantialist
approach ?
C_T : I didn't meet MacLuhan but i respect his
sense of humour. What imports in your question is
neither the marble nor the medium but the repeal :
the removal. Arte Povera proved marble didn't need
statue.
With Brandt over Haffner, Bertrand Lavier cleverly
showed that marble itself can do without marble.
Yet what's up when nothing is to be removed? At
pavu.com's, we leave Michelangelo's slave on
Manzoni's pedestal and focus on one and only goal:
becoming the masters of the world.
Therefore, to Mario Merz's "Che Fare ?" we answer
"Va bene !"
A_S : I wish we get back to this "informative
arts" concept. Here we have an extractive process
that relates to my previous question. But what do
you extract?
C_T : Defining roughly informative arts supposes
to think of information as a raw material and to
extract it without taking in account what it
pretends to convey. By this process based on the
technics of signals, pavu.com operates a semantic
reframe that enables to move the pole and
magnetize the position. In this case, you can
rightly speak of artistic engineering.
A_S : Yet, you still talk of a "default
position"...
C_T : Information is the stuff dreams are made of.
It's the appropriate matter for great conquests .
Art problematics cannot always be scrutinized from
an ecumenical point of view: reading Greenberg at
the cafÈ Belge while drinking pints of Grimbergen
is as much fulfilling.
A_S : How do you deal with a time dominated by
sampling and real time streams? Don't you fear to
exhaust a vein without guarantees of
popularization and profit?
C_T : Everything gets recycled and informative
arts are no exception.
What characterizes informative arts fits in a
single word: plining. Plining is pavu.com's LA
technology; it covers the entire process of
data-treatment: from data-drilling and swifting to
the final PROduct. Plining implies upgrade and
movement of Informative Objects. Our PROducts'
popularity prove they're open and respond to our
clients and consumers' needs. Moreover, all of
them are open-boucle et copyGNou guaranteed.
A_S : An entrepreneurial informative aesthetics,
then?
C_T : I leave aesthetics to beauticians. My
opinion is that if there's somebody to create
whatever aesthetics, then aesthetics exist. Value
judgments do not interest me. Everything ends in
exploitable and upgradable data.
A_S : Physicians and astrophysicians speak of
initial conditions. Is there an Informative Big
Band?
C_T : Informative Big Bang ? T.Click maybe...
A_S : Still this vexatious dynamics remains very
obscure to anyone not connected to the Internet
and even more to the consumer who doesn't find
there any narcissistic satisfaction. What do you
plan to overcome this difficulty?
C_T : Pavu.com carries on a large-scale works
policy that will allow a wider movement of
Informative Objects. This needed a new kind of
market so we created the NELia**. Yet we do not
forget usual channels and an infocoronary bypass
will soon enable us to provide the target with
beautyfully crafted PROducts that should satisfy
consumers who didn't take the connective plunge
yet.
A_S : How do you see the immediate future?
C_T : Developing the NELia market is of course a
priority. Pavu.com will also take part in upcoming
major international events. An online school is on
its way too but let's not unveil the surprize,
you'll know more as soon as Tomorrow...
A_S : Thanks Clément Thomas for answering these
questions. A last word?
C_T : It is clearly the end of the "tomorrow free
tabula shavings!". One single thing can be said
without mistake of pavu.com and informative
arts: "VA BENE!".
---
* Other pavu.com executive include Paul Dupouy and
Jean-Philippe Halgand who are respectively Chief
Président and Executive Directeur.
** The NELia (for New Eco Logic informative arts)
has been created by pavu.com to support online
creation. In return of the online hosting of
exchange values named Data-Heads (1 Data-Head
weights 6.96 Kb), it enables anybody to invest in
online art, to set up collections of Informative
Objects while taking part to the creation and
development of networked free territories, i.e the
GNou Found Lands, to prevent server space from
becoming hunting corporates' monopoly.
According to this promotional logic, the first
NELia store opened fall 2000 on "Shower - a new
degree of What!" followed a few months later by a
second one on "Black-Soap" - with no less than 30
international net art stars and more than 130
downloadable mixes and movies.
Institutions were not forgotten and Data-Head
budgets were voted for the FRACs (French cultural
institutions in charge of buying contemporary art)
to enable them to collect online art.
-- related links :
pavu.com:
http://pavu.com
GNou Found Lands Territory Desk Office and NELia
access:
http://www.GNouFL.com
forget the avant-garde !
gET Ready for the En-gArde !
http://pavu.com
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